April 29, 1997 / Stephen Van Evera / 17.423


                                    CAUSES OF THE HOLOCAUST


I.   THE COMMON EXPLANATION: VIRULENT GERMAN ANTI-SEMITISM

   Anti-semitic lunatics--Hitler and the Nazis-- took over in Germany, murdered the Jews.
   The key mystery is: why did they get away with it?  What allowed it?
   Daniel Goldhagen variant (HitlerŐs Willing Executioners): an "eliminationist anti
   semitism" was widespread among Germans and predisposed them to favor Hitler and help 
   him with his Holocaust project

   Criticisms:

   1.  The "anti-semitic lunatics" explanation is unsatisfying.  What or who made the Nazis 
       into lunatics?  What brought them to power? Likewise the "eliminationist anti-
       semitism" theory.  If eliminationist anti-semitism was the cause, where did it come 
       from?
   2.  Anti-semitism was no more virulent in Germany than in Rumania, Poland, Russia , and 
       Hungary during the 1930's.
   3.  Hitler murdered millions of non-Jews as well as Jews--a fact that neither variant of 
       the "virulent anti-semitism" theory predicts.
   4.  Had the German public been infused with the eliminationist anti-semitism that 
       Goldhagen sees, German Jews would have seen the holocaust coming, in the eyes and 
       words of their German non-Jewish neighbors.  But clearly they didn't see it coming--
       this is why so many did not flee.


II.  THE SVE EXPLANATION

Organized Christianity --->  Anti-semitism in Germany --> holocaust

                                 x

                             Anti-semitism throughout Europe--hence Ukrainians,
                             Lithuanians, etc. helped Germans do the holocaust; and
                             Americans, British didn't offer haven.

                                 x

                             Highly effective German state

                                 x

German militarism,           General public discussion in Germany during 1900-1918
international social ----->  of mass expulsions and murder as an appropriate way to 
Darwinism, general talk      to deal with disliked others (especially conquered Slavs
of empire and the need to    in the future empire).  This legitimized the idea of mass
seize it, especially by      murder, made it thinkable.
pan-Germans and the Army
during 1900-1918


This theory explains where Germany's lunatics came from, and predicts what we actually 
see: mass murder of both Jews and non-Jews, although focused on the Jews.